Metafic Without A Title
by Rachel Ehrlich
Summary: Joe, Dick, and Raven complain about their treatment, both in canon and in fandom. Then a Writer shows up. Oops.


_Author's Note: A metafic is like a story written by Deadpool: the characters know that they are characters and exist outside of any particular story. These particular characters like to complain about the types of stories into which they are written; some people are never satisfied. _

_Formatting note: "speech" *ASL*_

* * *

**Metafic Without A Title**

Joe tossed the copy of _**Deathstroke #6**_ he'd been reading on the table and sighed. In response to Dick's raised eyebrows, he asked, *When did I become the boy-whore of the DCU? Wasn't that _your_ job?*

Dick smiled. "Not for at least a couple of decades, now," he said. He stared out the window of Titans Tower as he thought hard about Joe's first question. "_**New Titans #55**_? You know, when you designed Donna's new costume as Troia... 1991, I think."

Joe nodded, remembering. *Oh yes, the infamous page 21. My creator trying to compensate for stupid rumors.*

"Well," Dick reminded him, "you _did_ say 'no' when Kole asked."

Joe threw up his hands in frustration. *I said 'no' to her question about wanting to sleep with her,* he clarified. *I never said I didn't like girls, and she never asked about it either; she outright stated that I _did_ like girls, I just didn't want to be with _her_. There was nothing vague about it.*

"Tell that to the readers; they didn't appear to get the memo."

Joe wrinkled his nose in disgust. *Would those be the same readers now writing slash fiction?*

That got a laugh. "Probably," Dick admitted, "though you certainly can't complain on that score. I've been slashed _way_ more than you, and with stranger pairings, to boot."

*My dad.* Dick nodded, and Joe looked away. *At least _you_ weren't related to him.*

Dick almost sprayed the coffee he was drinking all over the table. "Someone slashed you with _Slade_ -?"

*And me with Grant. Someone has a lot of issues they need to work through; I just wish they'd leave me out of it.*

Dick didn't know how to respond to that. "I guess… I mean, there have been plenty of Writers who made my relationship with Bruce less than platonic, but he's still not my biological father. That _is_ pretty twisted." He looked back at Joe. "Is that what's making you so grouchy? You're usually in a better mood."

Joe waved it away. *Sorry, just bitter about the current state of affairs in the DCU. I can't keep track of who and what I'm supposed to be on any given day – alive, dead, a ghost, a computer algorithm; gay, straight, bi; sane, mostly sane, full-on mental; hero, villain; mute, not mute, mute-but-with-a-technological-bypass; I need a damn flow chart to figure it all out. At least you're always just _you_.*

Dick could have debated that last point, but next to what Joe had been through, his issues paled in comparison. Joe's creator left the title less than a year after his introduction, and Joe had been pretty much relegated to the background until right before Titans Hunt, the storyline that ended in his death. It had taken DC eleven years to bring Joe back, only to have him get trapped on a computer disc immediately afterward and ignored again for several more years… and then he was barely back before being written as a villain time and again. Even Raven didn't get her characterization tossed around as much as Joe did.

"Did I just feel someone thinking about me?" Raven asked, sliding into a seat at the table next to Joe. "You, perhaps, Richard?"

"Just comparing notes between Joey's situation and yours," Dick confessed. "I didn't mean to interrupt your meditation."

Raven smiled. "I believe I am allowed, on occasion, to do things other than meditate… depending on the Writer, of course." She touched Joe's arm. "I sympathize with your situation, Joseph; we have always had similar issues. Be thankful, at least, that you were not included in _**Teen Titans Go!**_ while it aired. I have never understood that depiction of me." She looked down, then back at Joe. "It is said that one's creator cannot be incorrect about the character, but I must wonder, given how I have been depicted of late. I would never have thought my own creator would write me as a bitchy goth teenager…with a _tramp stamp_." She shuddered involuntarily, and Joe wrapped an arm around her shoulders for comfort.

Signing a bit awkwardly one-handed, Joe replied, *A tattoo is nothing; we're talking about a man who killed us both in Titans Hunt, made you into a caricature of your father until the title tanked itself, and retconned my sexuality in that pointless _**Convergence: Teen Titans**_ two-parter.* He turned to Dick. *No one ever treats _you_ like that.*

Dick shrugged. "The benefit of having been around since the Golden Age. The Bat Office would have killed anyone who tried. But that didn't stop me from getting pretty much all of my post-Silver Age time as a Titan negated or ignored by people who didn't want to deal with an alien princess in their grim-and-gritty realistic Bat-family titles."

*You bitch, you never told me you were an alien princess,* Joe joked, smiling.

Dick mimed listening to a phone. "Uh huh…. Uh huh…. yeah, I'll tell him." He mimed hanging up. "Charles Xavier wants your outcast mutant ass back at the mansion, pronto." Joe held up both middle fingers and crossed them to form an X.

Dick's retort was lost when the elevator doors opened and a Writer stepped out. Not an Official Writer, thank God, just a fanficcer; the days were long past where the fanfic Writers were the ones to be feared. She – fanficcers were mostly "she" – pulled up a chair on the other side of Dick and sat down like she belonged there.

"Haven't seen you in 20 years," Dick said. "What brings you around now?"

The Writer sighed. "Blame XxPhoenix FlightxX. I'm writing again because of her." She mock-glared at Joe. "I thought I was over you. I guess I was wrong."

Joe grimaced. *Trust me, I noticed. You have some nasty ideas in your head.*

"I'm a _fanfic Writer_, of course I do," she agreed, "but I'm still better than most, and light-years better than your current Official Writer at DC (_don't ask me how he ever got a job, with no concept of sequential storytelling or fleshed-out characterizations_, she muttered as an aside). At least my stories aren't just porn – sexual _or_ torture. In my stories you're never just a helpless victim."

*Not in the ones you post online, no, but perhaps you forget that I've seen them _all_.* The Writer had the grace to blush and look away.

"If I may…?" Raven interrupted. The Writer nodded. "You claim that I am your second-favorite Titan, and yet you never write about me. You are not particularly fond of Richard, and yet he appears in several of your works. I am confused."

The Writer looked down at her hands, trying to find a polite way to say what she needed to. "I love you, Raven, I really do," she said, "but you're nearly impossible to write properly. You're too powerful; even your creator had to go out of his way to remove you from several of the plotlines. A story can't happen if you just appear in a puff of smoke and _deus ex machina_ the plot away, and I refuse to write you out of character just to get around that."

"_Deus ex machina_ isn't a verb," Dick began before the Writer cut him off.

"To quote Calvin and Hobbes: I like to verb words. Verbing weirds language," she laughed, turning back to Raven. "And I _did_ write you, in _**True Colors**_. Sure, you were a harpy, but Joseph was a centaur, and he never complained." The Writer shrugged. "I don't do fluff pieces. If I did, I'd have a thousand of them about you and Joseph, but that's not me."

Dick leaned forward, smirking. "You also don't do slashfic, supposedly, but _**Whatever You Need**_ lists you as co-Writer, and we've all seen your Favorite Stories list."

The Writer gave him The Look. "A: I only wrote Joseph's POV, which, if you recall, is rated G; I could hardly _read_ Dannell's parts. And when I _do_ reference M/M relationships, like in _**Red Rain**_, I never go into detail. Let readers use their imaginations for that. And B: It's not my fault that gaybaconprincess and XxPhoenix FlightxX have a really interesting AU with Jason and Joseph." She turned to Joe. "If it makes you feel any better, that's the only villain version of you that I actually like."

She reached into her bag and pulled out a manuscript, tossing it on the table in front of Joe. "That will make you happy," she said. "My current Work In Progress puts you in the '80s Titans time period and focuses entirely on you. Nothing out of character, although you're certainly put into a situation you don't like." She turned to Raven. "I wasn't going to include any other Titans, but now that you've mentioned it, I might work you all into the resolution instead of bringing in Addie. After all, she already got plenty of page time in **_Red Rain_**, and you're right, as my #2 Titan I should write more of you."

The Writer stood up to leave. "If I'm lucky, you'll get the finished story as a Chanukah present this year. But to do that, I need to get back to work." She eyed Joe lasciviously. "Oh, the things I would do to you if I weren't married," she muttered. "Ah well, back to the grind." She walked back to the elevator, then out of the Tower, to emerge not in New York but in Everett, Washington. Turning on her laptop, she pulled up her latest story and began typing furiously once more.


End file.
